The state and quality of main stream journalism (MSJ), including that at our own ABC and despite what they might think of themselves, has deteriorated to the point of being totally useless. Instead of news, we get stories about cats in schools, fanfares about stupid celebrities making stupid remarks and any other triviality that might distract their audiences from the real world and the little that does resemble credible news, is either government propaganda, incomplete, misleading or a combination of all three. The credibility of MSJ is now non existent.

The collapse of Venezuela, shattered climate records, the release of Arctic methane and CO2, unsustainable global debt, Bilderberg meetings and the sixth mass extinction event currently under way are never mentioned. Our environment continues to be destroyed, the oceans polluted and fished to exhaustion, finite resources are wasted on corporate profits while poverty and overcrowding due to unsustainable population growth continue unabated and the fault lies squarely with MSJ which, has failed to hold those responsible to account.
Tony Jones, Australia’s most popular TV journalist, is the worst of the lot. For decades he has reveled in his popularity while all that sustains us is destroyed in the pursuit of growth and profit. He and his MSJ peers must change or we can kiss our sorry little behinds goodbye and if they think that they and theirs are somehow going to be exempt from the bloody mess that will inevitably befall us then, they are even more stupid than the ignorant fools who govern us.
Aussie journalists are only slightly more trustworthy than the corporate bought and paid for politicians that they serve. How proud they must be.

“We have forgotten the lessons of the 1760s, 1850s, and 1920s. We have let Economic Royalists hijack our democracy, and turn our economy into their money machine. Now the middle class is evaporating, infrastructure is crumbling, and pressure is reaching a breaking point. Anti-establishment candidates are on the rise, and no one knows how things will turn out.”http://evonomics.com/trump-phenomenon-is-a-sign-of-oligarchy/

“Thus, if tomorrow a war were to break out between the US and Russia, it is guaranteed that the US would be obliterated.”
“If attacked, Russia will not back down; she will retaliate, and she will utterly annihilate the United States.”http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/06/03/41522/

“Whether we believe that innovation and technology ultimately make the world better or worse, there is now overwhelming evidence that they are unsustainable in any case. Between economic over-extension, energy over-dependence, and the ruination of our atmosphere and other environments by our civilization and its technologies, it is now almost inevitable that we will soon see a collapse that will make the Great Depression, and perhaps even the five previous great extinctions of life on Earth, look like nothing.”
“Modern technology requires cheap energy, and, notwithstanding the recent power games between the US and Russia temporarily and artificially driving down oil prices, we are quickly running out of it.”http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2016/06/06/technologys-false-hope-and-the-wisdom-of-crows-repost/

“All references to climate change’s impact on World Heritage sites in Australia have been removed from a United Nations report.”
“Australia’s Department of the Environment requested that Unesco scrub these sections from the final version.”http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-36376226

Peak oil mates, peak oil. Those that deny it do not understand it.
“when oil companies (and governments) talk about oil supply, they include all sorts of things that cannot be sold as oil on the world market including biofuels, refinery gains and natural gas plant liquids as well as lease condensate.”
“If what you’re selling cannot be sold on the world market as crude oil, then it’s not crude oil.”http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Condensate-Con-How-Real-Is-The-Oil-Glut.html

“inflate another bubble. In other words, do more of what failed spectacularly.
This process of doing more of what failed spectacularly appears sustainable for a time, but this superficial success masks the underlying dynamic of diminishing returns:”http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjune16/collapse6-16.html

“Australia has amassed a huge pile of debt—over 120% of GDP—and most of it is mortgage debt on overvalued real estate. Now that Australia’s economy, which was driven by commodity exports to China, has tanked, a lot of this debt is being turned into interest-only loans, because Australians no longer have the money to repay any of the principal.”
“as conditions deteriorate further, the Australians will become unable to afford taxes and utilities.”http://cluborlov.blogspot.com.au/2016/06/the-money-cult.html

“if you care to avoid vaporization and, assuming we do avoid it, live a life other than serfdom, you must wake up and realize that your most deadly enemy is Washington, not the hoax of “Russian aggression,” not the hoax of “Muslim terrorism,” not the hoax of “domestic extremism,” not the hoax of welfare bankrupting America, not the hoax of democracy voting away your wealth, which Wall Street and the corporations have already stolen and stuck in their pockets.”http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/06/09/where-do-matters-stand-paul-craig-roberts/

“Its fast-growing stalk yields one of the strongest and most useful fibers known, used in superior paper, canvas, ropes, insulation, cardboard, clothing, shoes and plastic — plastic that is, by the way, biodegradable. This one plant can provide many of the products an industrial society needs, sustainably, while drastically reducing pollution, energy consumption, deforestation, fossil fuel use and providing income for millions of farmers”
“Both hemp and marijuana are cannabis plants. Hemp is cannabis sativa and marijuana is cannabis indica. So when regulators wanted to prevent people from getting high on cannabis indica, they criminalized cannabis, which included cannabis sativa, which made it illegal to use one of the most useful and sustainable crops the world has ever known.”http://www.dailyimpact.net/2016/06/07/the-war-on-hemp/

The consternation caused by the so called Brexit is truly astonishing. I’ve been watching the debate over whether Britain should stay or leave with disdain really, the entire show is going down the plug hole one way or another regardless. Though now it appears that Brexit may speed the process up. The Matrix has displayed amazing amounts of financial resilience with its never ending machinations, so who knows, they may still invent a way to avoid the plug hole for a few more months.

The more interesting aspect of this is how absolutely nobody in the mainstream media ‘gets it’. Much of the alternative media does though… Raul Ilargi from the Automatic Earth writes“Cameron, Osborne, Corbyn, they have all failed to connect with their people. This is not some recent development. Nor is it a British phenomenon, support for traditional parties is crumbling away everywhere in the western world.”

While the MSM concentrates on racism as a central reason for Brexit, exploding world population and overshoot don’t get a look in. Personally, I think that deep down, people everywhere are finally starting to feel that ‘something’s wrong’, and that certainly ‘the system is no longer working’, and that quite likely it’s our masters’ fault. And not too soon either…..

The majority vote by Britons to leave the European Union was an act of raw democracy. Millions of ordinary people refused to be bullied, intimidated and dismissed with open contempt by their presumed betters in the major parties, the leaders of the business and banking oligarchy and the media.

This was, in great part, a vote by those angered and demoralised by the sheer arrogance of the apologists for the “remain” campaign and the dismemberment of a socially just civil life in Britain. The last bastion of the historic reforms of 1945, the National Health Service, has been so subverted by Tory and Labour-supported privateers it is fighting for its life.

I do of course wonder if Pilger himself understands that as we enter the world of Limits to Growth, it becomes inevitable that the resources needed to feed the growth monster that supports the NHS in the UK (and Medicare here) are running out, and that the inevitable ‘end of abundance’ horizon is fast approaching. Nor that there are no solutions to fixing this problem, we will sooner or later be on our own, and anyone not prepared for this is in for a very rude shock… which is of course most people.

Here in Australia, with less than one week to go before we elect our next ‘government’, the ruling party appears quite worried about minor parties and independents winning seats, starting a scare campaign reasoning that such voting would cause chaos without them in power….. as if chaos wasn’t already here! I voted in Tasmania before coming up to Queensland, and put the majors last in the house of reps, and put no numbers at all next to their candidates at all on the Senate ballot paper….. and boy did it feel good. I wonder how many people will wake up to the fact that by numbering twelve boxes below the line they can actually get rid of the Laborals and retake power of their country, even if at this stage they still don’t know how to regain control over their destiny.

Pilger then further writes:

Immigration was exploited in the campaign with consummate cynicism, not only by populist politicians from the lunar right, but by Labour politicians drawing on their own venerable tradition of promoting and nurturing racism, a symptom of corruption not at the bottom but at the top. The reason millions of refugees have fled the Middle East – first Iraq, now Syria – are the invasions and imperial mayhem of Britain, the United States, France, the European Union and NATO. Before that, there was the willful destruction of Yugoslavia. Before that, there was the theft of Palestine and the imposition of Israel.

The pith helmets may have long gone, but the blood has never dried. A nineteenth century contempt for countries and peoples, depending on their degree of colonial usefulness, remains a centrepiece of modern “globalisation”, with its perverse socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor: its freedom for capital and denial of freedom to labour; its perfidious politicians and politicised civil servants.

He is absolutely correct of course, but still no mention of Limits to Growth, how climate change and peak oil totally stuffed Syria, and will soon cause Egypt to join the melée.

Raul gets it – as you’d expect:

The overwhelming underlying principle that we see at work here is that centralization is dead, because the economy has perished. Or at least the growth of the economy has, which is the same in a system that relies on perpetual growth to ‘function’.

But that is something we can be sure no politician or bureaucrat or economist is willing to acknowledge. They’re all going to continue to claim that their specific theories and plans are capable of regenerating the growth the system depends on. Only to see them fail.

It’s high time for something completely different, because we’re in a dead end street. If the Brexit vote shows us one thing, it’s that. But that is not what people -wish to- see.

Unfortunately, the kinds of wholesale changes needed now hardly ever take place in a peaceful manner. I guess that’s my main preoccupation right now.

Has the revolution begun in Britain? Now that would be ironic, beating the French to it…. of course the UK government could easily ignore the result, as the Greeks did, but then again, as Raul said, that would end in tears and possibly blood. Does the future offer us any other outcomes than blood and tears?

Winter is well upon us, two days past the solstice. The days are sure short now, sunrise happening well past 8am, and sunset before 4pm thanks largely to the hills surrounding Geeveston. With the cold days and fewer working hours, it seems not much work happens in Tasmania at this time of year!

At least, the sawmilling is all finished. The last seven logs laid around for three or four weeks while Pete fixed his brother’s badly built house, using, of course, the best weather to lift its roof off. But as they say, all good things come to those who wait.

It’s wet and cold and dark today, hence the gloomy look of my pile of wood porn…. there must be seven or eight cubic metres of the stuff now, enough, we hope, to build all the stud walls and roof structure. If I’m missing the odd stud, they’re easy to come by, unlike the 200×200 post and beams, and 200×50 rafters.

Tomorrow, I’m flying up to Queensland for a couple of weeks to help out while an extended family member is having an operation. Plus, I haven’t seen my better half in months, even managing to celebrate her birthday and our 39th wedding anniversary 2,700km apart. I need a hug!

The power station is still not finished, even though all the batteries are now full of electrolyte, because, the people I paid to supply me with two HRC fuses have still not delivered……. they keep promising, but never deliver. I’ve reached the stage I don’t even believe they even mailed them to me now such is their track record. While in Qld, I will see if I can buy them over the counter somewhere….. spares won’t go astray.

And then there’s the excavator fella…. you really have to wonder how these people stay in business.

First the machine blew a radiator hose. Fair enough I guess, except I immediately noticed the machine had no coolant in the cooling system, a real no no these days. Next weekend, he turns up with the wrong part. The following weekend, he turns up with the right part, gets it going, even moves it…… when the water pump spits the dummy. By now, I can’t help wondering how much damage has been done from lack of coolant! Another week goes by, and the machine has only just been taken away for major surgery. If this was happening in Summer, I’d be tearing my hair out.

My neighbours have been on holiday for nearly two weeks, and I’ve been house sitting – a nice change from sleeping in the shed – and feeding their pigs and dog. They’re all still alive, so I must be doing something right! Matt’s cows and sheep are on our land chomping on the greenest grass you’ve ever seen, and the dam’s spillway is actually running now. It’s nice to have proper seasons for a change.

With nothing much happening at the moment, and next door being away, it’s getting a little lonely around here, and I’m looking forward to seeing Glenda again…. even our kids will be there at some stage; thank goodness we can still do anything with fossil fuels.

I don’t usually do this, especially as we are so fast running out of time to turn this sinking ship around, voting at elections is quickly becoming a farce…. however, having said that, and seeing as voting in Australia is compulsory, here is a little bit of information on how to vote in the most worthwhile way for our Senate that I discovered just yesterday.

As you hopefully know, the government has changed the way we may vote on our complicated Senate ballot paper, with the unambiguous ambition of getting rid of the small parties. In my opinion, it’s the big parties we should get rid of, and here’s how we could do it, though I’m not holding my breath.

You can read the whole explanation here if you’re into maths (like me!) or just follow the strategic bit below……. and share as widely as possible, we need as many people as we can muster to do this and stick it to the laborals…!

Tactics

What you should try to do is get your vote to the latter part of the count, where it may have significantly higher value because of the counting system deficiency. But you don’t want your vote to get there via excess transfer from an elected candidate, because that will have diminished its final value.

How? I suggest the following:

Vote below-the-line. Above-the-line voting has lost all utility except for the lazy, now that you only have to correctly number six candidates with the sequence 1,2,3,4,5,6 for a below-the-line vote to be valid.

Make a list of candidates whom you favour but don’t think will be elected. Vote for those first, in order from the least likely to the most likely to be elected, but respecting any candidate preference you may have.

By way of insurance, and to increase the likelihood of a preferred candidate getting a six year term, make a second list of candidates you favour who are likely to be elected. After voting your first list, append your second list in order from the least likely to be elected to the most likely, again respecting any candidate preferences you may have.

If you haven’t yet numbered at least six candidates, continue numbering candidates you favour until you have. Your vote will be informal if you do not number at least six candidates in the sequence 1,2,3,4,5,6. Continue numbering candidates you favour as you see fit, preferably up to at least 12 in accordance with the ballot instructions, but avoid mistakes². There are arguments for then proceeding to number candidates you don’t favour on a ‘least worst’ basis, but avoid numbering any candidate you viscerally despise; your vote cannot count towards their election if you don’t number them (‘putting them last’ achieves nothing).

Why? Voting for candidates you favour in reverse order of their likelihood of election gives your vote its best chance of making it to late in the count, where it will have most value, while respecting your core candidate preferences. But don’t forget the 6 year term effect.

Personally I’ll be voting in the state of Queensland and favouring Greens’ candidates … but, tactically, I won’t be giving The Greens’ Larissa Waters an early preference on my ballot. That’s because she’s certain to be elected and doesn’t need my vote. She will get a later preference from me by way of insurance and to increase her likelihood of getting a six year term. Instead I’ll have Andrew Bartlett (probable second on The Greens’ senate list) high in my preference list, because his chances of election are fairly small and I can vote tactically to increase them.

By the way, while I’m often a Labor supporter, I won’t be numbering any Labor senate candidates on my ballot because I strongly disagree with that party’s pro-coal policies, especially their support for new steaming coal mines.

Unless you are Australian, dear reader, you may not know we are in the middle of one of the longest and most boring election campaigns this country has ever had to endure…. the party leaders are boring, visionless, ignorant, condescending, liars, dishonest, and I could go on….. and if you’re not Australian, I’ll bet you can recognise your own politicians in that list!

Don’t get me wrong, he’s the standout nice guy compared to the morons leading the other parties, but this ‘economic vision’ had me rolling my eyes….. and on paper, he’s walking the walk, much as I am. He lives on a farm, in a solar powered off the grid passive solar house, raising animals ethically and growing much of his food. He’s been ‘there’ longer than I’ve been ‘here’, and I’m sure he’s also got loads more money, so he’s actually way ahead of me……. our goals are seemingly the same. However, it appears that as soon as one gets involved in politics, common sense just goes out the window.

He begins with “Let me start with a statement that you won’t hear from any politician during this election campaign. The fortunes and failures of Australia’s economy are largely hitched to the whims of the global marketplace and we politicians have limited control over Australia’s economic future.” He’s right of course….. so why get involved? The big end of town buys the best parliament money can buy, and the Greens don’t get a look in! So how do they combat this? By appeasing them, even appealing to their greed!

Richard continues with “Governments are no longer in the driver’s seat. Rather their role is to ensure the air bag is able to cushion the impact on passengers when a crash occurs.” From where I sit, the airbags aren’t inflating. Further down, “Governments have a role in addressing market failure and there is no greater example of market failure than dangerous global warming. The entire point of putting a price on greenhouse pollution is to internalize the externality of carbon pollution and to point us towards our inevitable economic future, with minimal economic disruption.”

Hmm…. methinks he’s never read Limits to Growth… and here’s the proof: “The Greens plan for a new, clean economy would see GDP rise significantly, but that is not the only marker of progress.”

If ever there was one party that should be calling for an end to ‘jobs and growth’, it’s the Greens…. but instead, they try to appeal to the people who have been conned into believing that’s what we must have to ensure prosperity.

He goes on to ask “Where will our productive future lie?”, seemingly unaware that it’s this very ‘production’ that is the cause of the changing climate he correctly finds alarming.

Then, and this really got me glazing my eyes over, he delivers “Right now the CSIRO is piloting projects to create hydrogen through electrolysis from solar thermal power.[2] Gas and liquid fossil fuels could one day soon be replaced with pollution-free hydrogen in the use of energy, chemical feedstocks and vehicle fuels. We have the competitive advantages of sunlight, space and ingenuity, but we haven’t yet shown the political foresight to prepare.” So, he (and the CSIRO, obviously) have not heard of the energy cliff either…… I am actually appalled that the CSIRO are working on Hydrogen….. so much so, I hope Di Natale is wrong on this one.

Additionally, for a statement on the economy, there is zero mention of our debt predicaments….. it’s like the single biggest economic problem we face just doesn’t exist.

About all you can achieve by voting this year is to stop the most evil of the big parties to fail gaining office, because not one single one of them will avert the looming calamities facing us all.

Recently, on a Sustainable Population Australia forum, I was debating the fact that reducing population was no silver bullet to our predicaments, we needed to also reduce our consumption of everything. As I am wont to do, I rattled their cages repeatedly, pointing out all the usual stuff discussed on this humble blog. I neither doubt nor misunderstand why people get sick of me pointing out that ‘techno solutions’ are no solutions at all. It did take me fifteen years to learn why this was so, mourn the situation, come to grips with it, then accept it and move on….. it is no easy task.

Eventually, I’m asked what would I do if I was in charge; what solutions would I implement. I hate telling people there are no solutions (there aren’t..), and as a result I usually spout off the only things I can think of, like canceling debts and living more simply, after which I am normally dismissed as nutcase wearing a hairshirt and living in a cave.

The other day, however, my oversimplified list of ‘solutions’ was sarcastically described as my Great Leap Forward. This reference of course was an attempt to ridicule my ideas as nothing better than the total disaster Mao Zedong inflicted on China from 1958 to 1961. I was far too young to understand what was going on at the time, but the sarcasm wasn’t wasted on me, I have since read about the economic and social campaign by the Chinese Communist Party resulting in 18 million to 45 million deaths……

I was of course, a bit miffed, but that comment resulted in me coming up with the title for this entry, the Great Leap Sideways.

It never ceases to amaze me that people smart enough to recognise we are overpopulated, seem unable to understand limits to other growth. They all appear to believe that if we only reduce our numbers, we can have our cake and eat it too, a world of gadgets all powered by green energy….

It’s easy for me to offer ‘non solutions’ were I in charge of the world, because I never will be (thank goodness…) And I hate to tell the Sustainable Population Australia members, but Mao’s 18 to 45 million deaths is a picnic in the park compared to what faces the 7.5 billion and growing population about to come face to face with reality. The death of billions obviously appears monumental, because never before have we had so many people on the planet who will all die, one day, no matter what. Get over it….. one day, Peak Deaths will arrive too.

As I see it today, we face the perfect storm of, in likely order they will start affecting us, economic collapse, resource and food unavailability, and catastrophic climate change.

I recently heard on the radio some scientist, whose name I unfortunately did not catch while driving, that the era of limiting emissions is over, what needs to happen now is that we have to remove CO2 from the air, and fast…. how this was meant to happen, he did not say. probably because it’s nigh impossible, especially when considering the gargantuan scale it needs to happen on.

Just the other day, another ‘we’re saved’ meme turned up, scientists apparently managed to turn CO2 into rock in Iceland. The amount of energy required was of course not mentioned, and then it occurred to me that in Iceland, there’s so much sustainable geothermal energy available it’s probably the only place in the world where this would be possible to achieve… but then read further and you can read “The Iceland project has already been increased in scale to bury 10,000 tonnes of CO2 a year”. Wow. another journalist who does not understand orders of magnitude….. because we would need to build seven million such plants just to keep up with emissions, let alone reduce CO2 concentrations down from 400ppm to 350. Just think of what doing this would do to the already plummeting ERoEI of fossil fuels!

That’s the problem of course. No one either understands or wants to admit just how big a hole we have dug ourselves into. Just the other day I was accused by a ‘friend’ of not doing my bit because I wasn’t helping the Greens’ campaign in the current electoral farce. Been there, done that, I know when I’m wasting my time. IF, and it’s a huge if of course, the Greens could win the election, I may consider helping, but that simply won’t happen. And even if they did win, all they’d want to do is plaster more greenhouse emitting PVs and turbines all over the countryside, a non solution.

As I keep reiterating ad nauseam, only a major economic catastrophe can save us now. It’s even too late for the Great Leap Sideways…..

In case you missed it, the simplicity institute has released its latest doco. It’s cute, but it will not convince anyone but the diehard that this is the way to change…..

I nicked this interesting piece from Ozy.com It was illustrated with images of architecture that I think is precisely at the heart of what is wrong with the world and deleted them all…

Typical.

BY MEGHAN WALSH DEC 28 2015

Terry Root often goes to sleep at night wondering how she’ll be able to get up the next morning and do it all over again. Then the sun comes up and she forces herself out of bed. She might go for a run to release the pent-up anxiety. Sometimes she cries. Or she’ll commiserate with colleagues, sharing in and validating each other’s angst. What keeps Terry up at night aren’t the usual ailments; it’s not a tyrant boss or broken heart.

A senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment, Root has spent the past two decades unraveling the thread between climate change and the eventual mass extinctions of countless species of plants, animals — and, yes, humans. “That’s a tough, tough thing to cope with,” Root says in a weary, jagged voice. There’s more. When the gray-haired bird watcher shares her End of Days findings, she’s often met with personal attacks; naysayers hurl their disagreement and disdain, complete with name-calling and threats from politicians. But the absolute worst part of her job? We’re not listening. “It’s harder than hell to carry that,” says Root.

Armageddon aside for a moment, that an acclaimed scientist will say h-e-l-l to a reporter and use words like cope is a sign of changing times. Not only are we living on a warming planet but a progressively emotive one. It started with parents coddling their kids (no more advice to “just suck it up”), then it was emojis (punctuation isn’t enough) and now it’s climatologists tweeting “we’re f’d” and field researchers speaking up about climate depression — or even pretraumatic stress disorder.

There is a paradigm shift taking place in the field of science with the recognition that even the most stoic minds of the world need a way to process their doomsday findings. All of this is fueling a debate that’s raged since before Galileo and until recently landed on one central question: What place does human emotion have in scientific reasoning? But in 2015, there’s another layer that’s been schlepped into the controversial heap: What do you do when your job is to document the end of the world?

For centuries, professors say, the scientific fraternity has adhered to a “hidden curriculum” — right there, in invisible block letters, beneath the sign saying Goggles must be worn at all times. No. Crying. In. Science. And for good reason, many argue. In this world of double-blind trials and peer-reviewed articles, objectivity rules all. Otherwise cracks open up and doubt seeps in, rotting the very foundation science is built upon.

But what if the entire goddamned profession gets wiped out in a hurricane? Then what? There’s a growing sense of urgency as worsening environmental catastrophes play out before us. In the midst of what many in the science community — by “many,” we mean upward of 95 percent — are calling a planetary crisis, more researchers are finding that they can’t simply present their data in a vacuum, then go home at the end of the day and crack open a beer. “Scientists are going from these totally objective outsiders into being much more subjective and a part of the community,” says Faith Kearns, an outreach coordinator for the California Institute for Water Resources, which tries to solve drought-related challenges.

Indeed, the façade of total objectivity has deteriorated in recent years alongside intensifying environmental cataclysms. In 2012, Camille Parmesan, who shared a Nobel Prize with Al Gore in 2007 for her climate work, publicly announced her professional depression and frustration with the current political stalemate. Shortly after TheAtlantic named Parmesan one of its 27 “Brave Thinkers,” alongside Steve Jobs and Barack Obama, for her efforts to save species, she temporarily left her university job in Texas for a reprieve across the pond. Then last summer, climatologist Jason Box’s tweet — “If even a small fraction of Arctic sea floor carbon is released to the atmosphere, we’re f’d” — went viral, provoking a media frenzy. The public relentlessly chastised him for a) making a definitive statement instead of dealing in the usual probabilities and b) expressing emotion.

And now there’s the website Is This How You Feel?, which publishes handwritten letters from climate scientists expressing their frustrations, fears and hopes. One professor writes, “It’s probably the first time I have ever been asked to say what I feel rather than what I think.” Another scrawls, “I feel exasperation and despair. … I feel vulnerable that by writing this letter I will expose myself to trolling and vitriol.” Joe Duggan, the mohawked Aussie with a nose ring and master’s degree in the growing field of science communications who manages the site, says he’s been shocked at how many responses he’s gotten in the mail: “There is a movement of scientists looking for new ways to connect; they’re emoting in ways they never have before,” he says.

Elizabeth Allison turns off the lights. She instructs her students to stack one vertebra on top of the next until their spines are straight and long. Then to focus on the rhythm of their breath. In. And out. In. And out. Acknowledge any feelings or sensations that arise, then let them go. After 15 minutes she slowly guides them back into the present. Feet and hands begin to stir. Eyelids slowly make their way to full attention.

OK, that’s it. See you all next week — and don’t forget your homework assignment is due. After all, this is graduate-level course PAR 6079.

So much for that centuries-old hidden curriculum. From professors like Allison taking students through a guided meditation after a discussion on retreating rainforests to scientists signing up for workshops on compassion and communication to support groups for climatologists, human emotion has wedged itself into every step of the scientific method. Marilyn Cornelius, a Stanford-trained researcher, has found the best way to explore creative solutions for the planet’s woes is to meld behavioral science, biomimicry, meditation and design thinking. Now she works as a consultant, taking energy experts on wilderness retreats and teaching lab coats to connect with themselves and nature. “I made a decision to work on behavior change,” Cornelius says, “because it’s a positive way to work on the climate problem.”

This isn’t just about managing the feelings of scientists, though. Kearns, from the California Institute for Water Resources, acknowledges how painful it can be to watch academics try to relate to everyday folks and has made it her mission to make these interactions less cringe-inducing. The soft-spoken brunette first began thinking about this impasse after some years back she hosted a community workshop on emerging “stay or go” science that weighs whether home owners can — and should — protect their property from increasingly frequent and ferocious wildfires. Her audience was a small northern California community that had recently faced that very dilemma. Fear, anger and helplessness pulsed through the room. “I started to feel their anxiety,” Kearns says. “Our research has an effect on people’s lives. My scientific training hadn’t prepared me to cope with the emotions that come with that.”

But there is still the camp that believes feelings erode credibility and breed bias. It’s the naturalistic fallacy, and it’s the difference between the is and the ought. The philosophy is that facts can’t substantiate value judgments. Science is perhaps the last frontier of neutrality, especially in today’s polarized society. As Philip Handler, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, once said, scientists “best serve public policy by living within the ethics of science, not those of politics.”

The seismic sentimental shift among scientists parallels an outpouring of feeling — and narcissism — across American society. Once-detached psychotherapists are hugging their clients, journalists have come to love the personal essay (in fact, it seems like everyone has a story to tell these days), even man-eating corporations are experimenting with emotional leadership. Or think of the impassioned protests around Black Lives Matter, the outrage at sexual abuse and the pleas against social inequality. “There’s been more space in the public realm for bringing up and dealing with emotional stuff, and that has cracked the shell of otherwise very removed scientists,” says Allison, a professor at the California Institute for Integral Studies. Then again, maybe climatologists are more cunning than we give them credit for, and they’re simply taking a page out of their opponents’ playbook.

Indeed, emotions are a powerful tool for those who know how to use them. Which is why those leading the climate-change charge aren’t looking to labs anymore. Instead, eager students are following Cornelius’s path, pursuing studies in contemplative environmentalism or transformational ecology, which looks to shrinks, money and Facebook to protect the planet. With the future of everything at stake, what has traditionally separated science from sentiment is a lot less defined — and perhaps even irrelevant.

But emotions are less predictable than facts and figures. Root remembers giving a talk once at the University of Utah. Afterward a few students came up to ask questions; one young man had tears in his eyes. “Is it really this bad?” he pleaded. Root told him it’s worse. He went on to become an activist and was sent to prison for one of his illegal protests. Root has always felt responsible.

“I’d always thought that facts and the truth would win out; then I realized that wasn’t the case,” Root says.